Tangled

Release Date: November 24, 2010

Watch Date: July 31 – August 1, 2023

“When the kingdom’s most wanted – and most charming – bandit, Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), hides out in a mysterious tower, he’s taken hostage by Rapunzel (Mandy Moore), a beautiful and feisty tower-bound teen with 70 feet of magical, golden hair. Flynn’s curious captor, who’s looking for her ticket out of the tower where she’s been locked away for years, strikes a deal with the handsome thief, and the unlikely duo set off on an action-packed escapade, complete with a super-cop horse Maximus, overprotective chameleon Pascal and a gruff gang of pub thugs.”

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    Get comfortable, make sure you have a nice drink, you’ve gone to the bathroom, had a snack. We’re gonna be here for a bit.

    Bob’s mother is a narcissist.

    Oh it feels good to type that out.

    Now, according to the website Choosing Therapy, the definition of a narcissistic parent is “Narcissistic parents are incredibly possessive, critical, and controlling of their children. These parents fear children becoming independent and will humiliate and shame them to prevent this from happening.” Growing up with them is hell. Growing up with them is living in a tower custom made for you and having your perception of the outside world, of others, of yourself, completely warped. Bob and I were friends while he grew up in that house, rarely, if ever, getting off the phone – a fact he had to hide. I heard the gaslighting, the shouting, the insults. It is a toxic, awful experience and one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy – to have the person who is meant to love you be the person who hurts you and tears you down. It sets you up for failure in future relationships, erodes your self worth, and takes years to recover from.

    Disney captured the experience perfectly.

    Watching Tangled is both a therapeutic experience for my husband, and also one that is extremely triggering. He has to be in the exact right mood, or it’s simply going to get turned off within the first twenty minutes. We need to take breaks, moments to process, and for hours, days, afterwards we’re going to be comparing his real life experience with that of Rapunzel.

    Her song is one of the best Disney villain songs, bar none. There’s all the little things she does to show all she cares about is Rapunzel’s hair; from referring to her as ‘Flower’, checking on her hair first when she thinks she’s been hurt, the I love you most talking to the top of Rapunzel’s head. She’s not beyond straight up murder. She’s devious and intelligent, she’s lived – according to the later television series – at least a thousand years, and so she’s patient and familiar with the way humans think and their motivations, and extremely willing to manipulate them to her benefit.

    In this way, Mother Gothel has become, for us at least, one of Disney’s premier villains. Because Mother Gothel could, and does, exist in the real world. Because at least in this film, she gets her comeuppance, she gets defeated, her child gets away. I wonder, honestly, if anyone who had anything to do with the writing, and portrayal, of her character had their own experiences with a narcissistic parent. Her depiction is too real, to visceral, for me to believe that no one had their own experiences.

    But I don’t want to just focus on the villain of the piece, because there’s so much more to this film. Eugene Fitzherbert and Rapunzel, for a start. Both are extremely well written characters in their own right that grow in a believable way throughout the film, and their romance blossoms in an extremely natural way. They make sense with one another, and play off one another extremely well. They’re definitely relationship goals for me, playful, silly, but completely devoted to one another and willing to sacrifice their own lives if it means the other person is happy.

    I love the choice made to keep Rapunzel’s parents silent. They say so much through their expressions that giving them dialogue might have only weakened the emotions they feel. Maybe it was just a choice made so that the animators could show off what they could do in a 3D animated space, but I don’t care. It’s a choice that worked in their favor.

    The songs in this film may not be earworms like other Disney animated classics, there is nothing to compare to “You’re Welcome”, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”, or “Under the Sea”, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good songs. I’ve been singing “When Will My Life Begin” under my breath whenever I’ve done my chores for as long as I can remember. Who can’t relate to “I’ve Got A Dream” and it’s positive, message that is sung with a love for life that just makes it fun. I argue that “I See The Light” is one of Disney’s best love songs, and definitely one of it’s best duets. That scene in the film is gorgeous to look at, the dream of all who fall in love, to have a moment that is pure magic, to know that you are with the one person for whom you would do anything.

    The animation holds up, though it is now starting to show it’s age. There are definitely moments where things maybe look a little soft, a little unfinished, but that doesn’t matter. I hate that I notice it, but the fact that it still looks as good thirteen years later, when animation has improved as much as it has in this past decade should say something – and prove that it will still be an extremely pleasant visual experience for at least another decade or two.

    This movie has everything, and I mean that. Is it Disney’s best Disney Princess film? I don’t know. My nostalgia says that there is better, but I still come back to “I See The Light” whenever I’m feeling particularly romantic about my husband, who himself feels seen by this film in a way he hasn’t ever really been made to feel by a film before. I know that Rapunzel and Flynn get a lot of love, especially in the Disney Parks, but I don’t think that the movie as a whole gets enough recognition. What it does, the story it wants to tell, it does it extremely well. It should have, as has always been my opinion, gotten a lot more love than Frozen ever did, because the experience it’s sharing is so raw and human, all wrapped up in a pretty Disney bow.

    This was the first real contender to “Wall-E”s throne on the master list, and it still remains to be seen if that little robot can hold on to it’s number one spot, as Bob is often willing to relook at the list and shift position days, weeks and months after watching a film because sometimes distance helps you see things a little clearer. Now, personally, I probably would have happily put it in the top spot, but that is not my role in the blog. “Tangled” will always have a special place in my heart, a Disney Princess film that feels like it’s about the man just as much as the woman, with a villain who exists out there in the real world and still tries to claw her way into my life – bringing as much misery as possible when she does. It is the romantic relationship I dreamed of as a girl, with heartfelt songs I love to hum to myself. It’s beautiful to look at, and tells a story that needs to be shared.

    Damn, now I kind of want to watch it again.